MUMBAI, May 28: Bajaj Finserv on Thursday said it will be investing up to Rs 2,000 crore in artificial intelligence and technology-led startups in the next five years.
The Pune-headquartered company made the announcement with the launch of ‘Finserv Intelligence’, a strategic initiative in applied research and innovation, focussed on high-tech, low unit-cost, highly scalable solutions, built in India, as per an official statement.
“Bajaj Finserv companies will invest Rs 1,500-2,000 crore over a five-year period in startups and early-stage companies with strong scalability potential across AI, cybersecurity, quantum technologies, fintech and consumer technology platforms,” the statement said.
It has also tied-up with IIT-Bombay to establish a joint research centre and define a joint statement of work spanning AI, cyber security, quantum technologies and the reimagining of physical retail experience.
Finserv Intelligence (FI) has been designed as a holistic innovation ecosystem with a five-to-ten-year horizon for realisable impact through academic collaborations, investments in the start-up ecosystem and in-house specialists, the statement added.
“The next decade of value creation in financial services will belong to those who build technology that powers it,” the company’s chairman and managing director, Sanjiv Bajaj, said.
With IIT Bombay, Bajaj Finserv is putting India’s finest scientists and most ambitious founders at the centre of solving problems that matter to a billion-plus Indians, he added.
The initiative envisages research and development labs, centres of excellence, venture-led models and scholars-in- residence programme for capability building, as per the statement.
The company’s vice chairman and managing director, Rajiv Jain, said FI offers founders something fundamentally different from capital and startups will plug directly into its ecosystem, governance frameworks, financial discipline, operational depth and market insight.
Jain added that it will instil the principles that build enduring companies with frugal engineering, sharp unit economics, ROI (return on investment) discipline and rigour required to scale.
“We believe the true value of research lies in its translation into technologies and solutions that create meaningful, real-world impact. We strongly believe that innovation must be accompanied by effective translation and deployment,” said Shireesh Kedare, Director, IIT Bombay. (PTI)
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